The Humanverse™ Summit: Adapting Business to 2030

Imagine a world where businesses stay grounded in The Humanverse™, a place where nature and people are valued and prioritized to achieve profit while making a societal impact.

The Humanverse™ business model came to me when I and my fellow Young Global Leaders (YGLs) attended a Summit of the World Economic Forum meeting in Geneva two years ago. On the heels of the pandemic, it was a time when enthusiasm over virtual engagement, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence was exploding.

Economists predicted that a trillion dollars would be invested in the metaverse by 2030. We were in a session talking about the potential for people to buy virtual “clothes” in the metaverse, real estate next to celebrities, and even land holdings in the metaverse. “Won’t it be great to connect with each other in the metaverse?!” the presenters were pontificating.

I looked around at my fellow YGLs, all of us feeling energized to be together in person again, and the disconnect struck me. Hard. With nearly 25 countries in Africa suffering from chronic hunger, with $5 trillion needed annually to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to end extreme poverty, why would $1 trillion in capital go into the ether instead of onto this planet, Earth? I said it out loud for the first time, “Might this be a misallocation of capital? To invest in alternate universes? We need to redirect global capital flows into the humanverse!”

The Humanverse™ is where we reside, where we live; it’s where real life happens. It’s where real problems haunt us every day, problems such as food insecurity, a global healthcare crisis, mental health challenges related to social media use and other matters, impacts of extreme climate change, loss of critical biodiversity, inequality, and other pressing issues. These very human issues need nature-centric and human-centric solutions today, and these issues need capital allocation from businesses, governments, institutions, and individuals to resolve them.

As a small business owner, I acknowledge that businesses must be profitable to succeed, but not at the expense of nature’s welfare, human dignity, and humanity’s very survival.

At our firm, every team member believes that when capital is invested in nature- and human-centric design, profit becomes an outcome of sustainable development. That's why we brought together chief executives and other leaders on Oct. 9th to launch and help us begin the co-creation of The Humanverse™.

At the outset of the Summit, we announced that our broad objectives in convening were to share ways to integrate sustainability into the business model; inspire participants to adopt The Humanverse™ (nature + people) as a core corporate value; and walk away with a set of ideas and recommendations for scaling The Humanverse™ business model locally and globally, providing our firm and each other with a notional set of “Guiding Principles” for business worldwide in The Humanverse™.

I couldn’t have been more pleased with the way the Summit unfolded. We aimed to have 50 leaders participating in the Summit; we ended up with 80 at the table. Gee, it was tight quarters! We started with plans for two panels; the response was so strong that we added a third. We expected to walk away with fresh ideas; we ended the day with commitments from key stakeholders to work with us on shaping The Humanverse™ agenda.

What a personal joy it is for me to see The Humanverse™ go from a concept into development and practice. This Executive Summary and Rapporteur’s Report conveys highlights from the Summit that underpin a successful launch of The Humanverse™ Institute in 2025 and our firm’s “DevryBV Main Street Strategy,” which is our desire to be physically present with local offices in communities across the United States in the years ahead.

I am deeply grateful to all who helped co-create The Humanverse™ with us, and we welcome feedback on this report from anyone who couldn’t be there.

You can access the Executive Summary and full Rapporteur’s Report here, and photos from the event are posted here.

Please keep in touch and Get Grounded in The Humanverse™ with us.

~ Devry Boughner Vorwerk, Chief Executive Officer.